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The Great Global Warming Swindle

Azp

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Anyone seen this doco and have an opinion of it?
 

vlv8vic

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haven't seen it. one hellava can of worms you just opened there. Needless to say keep it clean people and i'll be watching like a hawk.

Alternatively Azp, you could do a quick search and probably find the handful of threads on the same topic which were lucky enough not to descend into a bitch fight and be closed.
 

greenfoam

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Azp, I think we are several years past the point of it being worth arguing now. I've got science magazines from the mid 1950's suggesting global warming will happen in the future so, I read those when I just a tiny little kid so it's not new to me:p. the poles are something like 5 degrees warmer than they used, the ice sheets are breaking away as we speak etc. I really don't think anyone can deny the place is warming up faster than it ever has ever before. Given that the start of space is only 100km away it's not hard to see how its very easy to change that thin layer of gases we have, alot of companys are and will continue to try and sway public opinion so they can keep making profits, they will throw money at anything they can to make it appear everythings good. But I've also been a vegetarian most of my life and I'm long since seeing past the meat and dairy corps tactics which have similar goals with their advertising. Anyway I wont post again in the thread but that's how I see it. In short it is happening but they are trying to cover your eyes
 

Azp

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Haha ok guys, point taken. Feel free to close the thread if you like, I didn't realize it was a touchy subject around here. I've only just become interested in the topic and am finding it fascinating. :)
 

Grennan

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Haha ok guys, point taken. Feel free to close the thread if you like, I didn't realize it was a touchy subject around here. I've only just become interested in the topic and am finding it fascinating. :)

Its just touchy around here because a) its been done to death and b) a particular member never stops preaching about it and it gets annoying (atleast from where Im sitting).
 

alexp36

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Hadn't actually heard of it until now.
ABC have an interesting review of it:
The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle - Features - The Lab - Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Gateway to Science

Sounds about what I was expecting.Are you expecting to watch it Azp? Be interesting to hear what you think if you do.

I watched an interesting doco the other day about the US sub-prime mortgage crash, called "House of Cards". Amazing how badly they handled their lending over there - allowing people to get $500,000 dollar mortgages without even checking they had any income. It's no wonder they've gotten into so much financial trouble.
 

Azp

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Hadn't actually heard of it until now.
ABC have an interesting review of it:
The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle - Features - The Lab - Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Gateway to Science

Sounds about what I was expecting.Are you expecting to watch it Azp? Be interesting to hear what you think if you do.

I watched an interesting doco the other day about the US sub-prime mortgage crash, called "House of Cards". Amazing how badly they handled their lending over there - allowing people to get $500,000 dollar mortgages without even checking they had any income. It's no wonder they've gotten into so much financial trouble.

Yeah I watched it, didn't quite know what to make of it. I just want to make it clear that it does not deny that global warming is happening, because it is, it just questions how much of a role man is playing in it. It made some really good points but I didn't know whether to trust their facts and graphs. The ABC review was interesting because they mainly ripped into my biggest problem with the documentary and that was the over simplified graphs.

My problem with the ABC review was that Bernie Hobbs (the review author) failed to explain what I felt were the biggest points of the film, and attempted to explain away other points by discrediting the film makers rather than presenting science and facts, which in my experience is usually a sign that someone doesn't have any science or facts to counter the points. Right from the beginning, Bernie Hobbs attempted to influence the reader by painting the film makers as a bunch of laughable, know-nothing clowns, when in actual fact all of the interviewees are far, far more qualified on the matter than she is (many professors and researchers at multiple universities, NASA and even the co-founder of greenpeace etc who have been in the field for years).

For me the biggest points made were:

-The earth has been heating and cooling naturally since long before humans started producing CO2, would we really expect temperatures not to change over the last century? What would you expect temperatures to do if man wasn't causing global warming? Stay the same?

-If CO2 is the main cause of global warming, how much are we really contributing? Humans (with all our industrial processes and cars and what not) contribute less than 5% to the total CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere. I really fail to see how purchasing carbon credits is going to help. Even if we cut back to zero CO2 emissions (yeah right) there will still be 95% of what was entering the atmosphere continuing to enter the atmosphere. Volcanoes, for instance, emit a far greater amount of CO2 each year than human sources, rotting vegetation even more than that (bloody rain forests).


Also man caused or not, I don't like what is happening with Africa over it. I don't think a few less CO2 emissions are worth human lives.

I also love how in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore preaches at everyone to ride a bicycle to work and use energy efficient light bulbs, yet when he gave a presentation at my uni he had no worries about rolling up in a 5.7l V8 Holden amongst other large vehicles in his convoy. It's well known that he has a carbon footprint the size of a small town. The more people he scares with inconvenient truth film, the more money he can make by selling delicious carbon credits (yes he owns a company that sells carbon credits).

That house of cards doco sounds interesting, might have to watch it.
 
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Benjamin K

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I am a scientifically minded person (aced physics, biology and chemistry in grade 12). How I look at the subject is as following.

Basically everything is in equilibrium. Put simply if there is no CO2 in the atmosphere, trees simply wont grow as they are carbon stores. CO2 emissions will only increase the rate at which they grow.

However I blame the increase in green house gasses (specifically CO2) on the logging industry as we would definately be cutting down trees at a rate far faster then the accelerated growth rate caused by the increased CO2 levels. So if we put restrictions on the logging industries around the world the trees would be able to absorb most of the increased CO2 levels.

But climatology is such a complicated field that it is IMPOSSIBLE to pin it down to one cause which is what a lot of the global warming supporters are doing. For example the Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas and is actually a very efficient energy source as combustion goes something along these lines CH4 + 2.O2 -> 2.H2O + CO2 (note the small amount of CO2 released when 891kJ/mol is released as energy)

However there are numerous other factors that I won't go into in detail so I'll just go through a list with results

Water/gas solubility affected by increased temperatures (for global warming).

Increased water available for C02 absorbtion (against global warming)

Temperatures closer to plankton optimal temperatures resulting in faster growth (against global warming)

So in short, yes the world IS heating up, however you can't pin it on to one.
 

alexp36

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That's a good point about the proportion of CO2 emissions from human activity being very low Azp, I didn't know that.
Oh well, hopefully someone will come up with some technology to help control global temperatures, 'cause anthropomorphic or not, it's definitely going to be a problem if the globe gets too much hotter. Guess we'll all have to move to Antarctica or something...
 

alien

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LOL, now that you've watched one side, try and watch another side. Maybe "An Inconvenient Truth" by ex-USA president Al Gore. That also shows who the main contributor to global warming is... and surprise surprise it's the USA! Australia only contributes just over 1% of CO2.

But like greenfoam said, we're over the stage of arguing, it's happened and is still happening, when need to move on and work on it. Which i'll come back to.

Right now, we as the public are looking at organisations to solve the problem.
Organisations only produce what the public want. They arn't going to make things that people dont want, that's stupid! And the public complains when there is a shortage of something they want.
So we then turn to government (the third and final player). A government which limits what freedoms we have (and tells us what e can and cant buy) wont be elected! We would hate being under that. And if a government group all of a sudden changed and used that attitude, you'd find they'd get voted out pretty quickly at next elections!

So there we have the loop of who's responsible! We're getting no where and looks like nothing can be achieved. Pretty depressing actually. It's an ethical dillema.

Anyways, now back to my point above, lets just say if we stopped ALL CO2 emissions tomorrow, the world would get a LOT worse before it got better. Why? Well, the CO2 will start to diminish, but right now that is whats protecting us from Solar Winds. So if we get rid of the layer of CO2 we have there will be MORE solar energy getting in, increasing the global temperature quicker! Seems stupid, considering if there was action 50-60 years ago when they first knew it wouldn't have been as bad.

Only thing is it's the only option if we do want to keep the Earth a liveable planet for a lot longer. Actually, just thought then that it's kind of like smoking, it's hard to quit, but long term it's better to quit. Same thing applies here, long term it's better to reduce CO2, but it's going to be hard on everyone. And yes, many species will still die. There's even polar bears drowning because they're swimming long distance to try and find ice. They could quite possibly become extinct in the wild!
 
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